


The Djinn Awakens

by deathrae



Category: Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic
Genre: M/M, Star Wars AU, but if goofy jedi AUs are your jam, here you go, honestly if you think of this as like, it kinda works really well actually, lbr Lady Arba as Darth Vader is sort of perfect, rogue one almost, sorry about the cliffhanger ending, where this content is basically the story behind the opening crawl for another movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 11:51:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13189491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathrae/pseuds/deathrae
Summary: The Kou Rebellion has tasked its smallest reconnaissance squadron with the task of unraveling the Empire's plans, but things haven't gone as planned. Somewhere in the abyss of space, the fourth and final Jedi is in hiding. A gold-hearted smuggler gets the job of the lifetime.All while the Empire's most lethal enforcer is on the prowl.





	1. Black Squadron

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skwinky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skwinky/gifts).



> This might be one of the goofiest, most self-indulgent things I've written in recent memory. I started it ages ago, but upon finally accepting two things: firstly, that I don't know where to take the ending, and secondly, that it actually _kinda_ stands okay on its own, I decided to dust it off and post it.
> 
> Steph this is comically overdue as a birthday gift, but uh. I hope you like it! 8D;;

Their mission should have been simple. In fact, it _was_.

Right up until blaster fire paused the fight and the searing heat of his foe’s lightsaber ripped across his knees.

 

“Oi, oi,” Judal called, raising his voice but keeping his face close to the bacta tank holding Hakuryuu’s healing body.

A technician leaned away from the console to look at Judal. “What?”

Hakuryuu looked somehow alien, trussed up with ropes of pipe and cable and hanging from a sling, his face hidden behind a steel breathing mask... and at the same time he looked disturbingly human and fragile, stripped down to his undergarments in the tank. The prominent, ancient burn scar across most of his chest and shoulder was starkly obvious in the pale blue backlight of the tank and his skin was noticeably pale. He floated vaguely upright in the enzyme soup, suspended in a drugged sleep as the bacta fluid worked through his system. Now and then his legs kicked, knees waving even though his feet couldn’t respond.

“How much longer is he gonna be in there?” Judal asked, tapping a finger on the glass.

The technician sighed and turned back to the display, reading the life-sign scans. “Two more hours, then he’ll be fitted for the prosthetics. And please don’t tap on the glass.”

“Figures,” Judal said, flicking his black cloak up over his shoulder, one hand propped on his hip as he watched his partner. “All that work, and he sleeps the day away.”

He left his floating companion and found an empty room, warning away a technician with a cold glare and sliding the door shut with a wave of his hand. His comm unit crackled when he flicked on the power, the system groaning to life.

There was a long pause as the unit struggled to work and Judal examined the room he’d borrowed. Electrical panels glowed on most surfaces, broadcasting coordinates, radar scans, and passenger data.

“Black Two, we copy. What is your status?”

“Shitty. I need the General.”

A sigh rattled through the speaker like a snake’s hiss.

“I read you Black Two. Hold for line transfer.”

The comm unit crackled and he held it away from his face, listening to the sound of distant, muted conversation interrupted with radio static.

“General to Black Two.”

The General’s voice was deep, smooth like butter, and although they didn’t exactly _get on_ , right now it was a welcome relief.

Judal sucked audibly at his teeth. “Making me wait, General?”

He could almost _hear_ the sound of her eyes narrowing. “I assume you called for good reason? What’s the status on Black Leader? You made it to the waystation?”

“Obviously,” Judal said, leaning back on his heels. “What do you take us for?”

“You don’t want me to answer that question.”

“Tch, and why’s that?”

“Because right now, all I know is that you and Black Leader flubbed your mission, failed to retrieve the item in question, and had to divert to one of our few surviving safehouses to get Black Leader back on his feet.”

“Literally,” Judal said, snickering.

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing. _Ma’am_.”

“Do not get smart with me, Black Two.”

“Fine, fine,” Judal purred, and sighed. “Alright. Yes. We lost the schematics. But we do have a lead.”

“And?”

“Our _esteemed_ Galactic Emperor Sinbad—”

“Spare me the melodrama, please.”

“How boring.” Judal clicked his tongue against his teeth and rubbed a hand under his shirt. His ribs ached—one of the Emperor’s men, an untested Force-user by the way he fought—had thrown him halfway across the battlefield into a stone wall. He didn’t think anything was broken, but it still _hurt_. “Anyway. It’s the Emperor’s pet Jedi and his friends.”

“Solomon’s boy? The one who turned against Sinbad after the war started?” She sounded puzzled. “What about him?”

“We know where he is.”

The line went so quiet he tapped the face of the comm unit to make sure the connection hadn’t been lost.

“Oi. Sister dearest. You still there?”

“I read you, Black Two. And don’t call me that.”

“You heard what I said?”

“I did, and I trust you will not elaborate. This is not a secure enough channel.”

“Yeah yeah.” Judal leaned against a console, rolling his eyes. “Shall we engage?”

“Yes. Transmit your coordinates through a direct line—we’ll monitor your progress from here.”

“Sure.”

“Black Two?”

Judal hesitated. The General’s voice had gone softer, less sure. She was nervous, and she was taking a risk putting him in a position to know it, too. She was the leader of the remnant of a great nation. The fewer people who knew how weak she could be, the better.

“Yes, General?”

“Do your best to bring him to us.”

“What,” he drawled. “One Jedi isn’t enough for the Rebellion?”

“We aren’t the Rebellion anymore,” she said, sounding snippy. “You are, and anyone else you can manage to wrangle to your side. Just don’t get my brother killed while you’re out there, alright? _He_ should be doing this job...”

“I’ll do what I can to keep him standing,” he said, laughing at his own wit, and she grunted in frustration.

“Update us when you can,” she said, unnecessarily.

“I’ll fill the airwaves with my sultry voice,” he said, waving a hand magnanimously even though she couldn’t see it. “Just for you.”

“ _Out_ , Black Two,” she said venomously, disconnecting the comm.

His unit cut out with a crackle of static and Judal laughed, putting it back into his bag. He pulled up his shirt to check the bruising (colorful) and the state of his cloak (dusty, but intact). Nothing for it, then. If he had a couple more hours to kill, he’d at least get a nap in before they had to find a ship and skip halfway across the galaxy in search of some _child_.

 

The Rebellion—sorry, the shattered fragments of the Rebellion’s original incarnation, Kou—dropped them off on a nearby neutral planet for them to find passage. Kou ships couldn’t take them halfway across the galaxy in pursuit of a lost Jedi without attracting entirely too much attention.

Especially when “Black Squadron” comprised only two people: one Judal, fallen Jedi, and one Hakuryuu, former commander of the Rebellion and wielder of one of the Order’s contraband vibro-weapons.

The staff of Hakuryuu’s inactivated glaive jutted out above his shoulders, menacing even without energy coursing through its blade, and Judal glanced at it now and then as they navigated the grimy spaceport.

“I _know_ ,” Hakuryuu growled before Judal said anything. “It doesn’t collapse any smaller. Stop looking at it, you’re drawing attention to it.”

He was still getting used to the new prosthetics. The clumsiness of his gait and his unrelenting crankiness would’ve been hint enough, but the short break they took for him to sit and rest, rubbing his real fingers into his knees where the metal was wired into his legs, proved it.

Judal kept an eye out for anyone tailing them, but magnanimously limited his comments to a sly, “Maybe you’re finally getting too old for this job.”

Hakuryuu sniffed disdainfully and kept moving, winding his way into a crowd. Judal gave a Hutt a wide berth and stuck close, wrinkling his nose.

“I hate spaceports.”

“Too bad,” Hakuryuu said, sounding chiding despite the treachery of his mouth, twisted in a smirk. “Come on, we’ll try the cantina.”

Judal groaned and Hakuryuu ignored his grumbling.

Cantinas, in his not at all humble opinion, always stink to high heaven, the air weighed down with the stench of smoke, spilled liquor, and the sweat-smell of a dozen different species. Not to mention the lack of light, the press of unwashed bodies and unlaundered clothing, pickpockets, and the thick layer of grime on everything in sight.

The music was alright though.

“Get a drink,” Hakuryuu said shortly after they entered. _Shockingly_ , the cantina was exactly as Judal anticipated: disgusting. “I’ll see if I can find someone headed off-world.”

Judal considered protesting and swapping jobs so Hakuryuu didn’t have to keep walking around, but he wasn’t exactly interested in going around polling the local wildlife. He shrugged, waving his fingers at Hakuryuu to indicate he’d acquiesce.

The barkeep didn’t, strictly speaking, make eye contact with him. Nor did the other patrons at the bar. He wasn’t sure why, it wasn’t like he had a vibroblade swinging from his hip. He didn’t even have a visible blaster.

Then again, the _lack_ of weaponry actually might be the issue, in a backwater scum-pit like this one.

“Oi,” Judal said, hopping up to rest on his arms, his elbows on the bar. It was tall enough his feet kicked vaguely at the ground. “Oi, you the one taking orders?”

A scuffle pulled his attention—normally he wouldn’t have cared but Hakuryuu’s physical state had him at least vaguely concerned—and he turned around. Across the room a human was squabbling with an alien. Something Judal didn’t recognize offhand; from the Inner Rim, he was pretty sure. Hakuryuu wasn’t immediately visible, so he almost turned back around, but something piqued his interest, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

The human was dark-skinned, large, and wearing startlingly little, as if he wouldn’t have understood the word “cold” even if you shoved him into a freezer. His hair was tangled in dreads, held high away from his face with a band, and he had the alien up against a wall. He’d wrapped his hands around its neck and was, to Judal’s surprise and pleasure, actively strangling it.

There was one thing he’d say for seedy cantinas, at least.

They were rarely _boring_.

“Cassim!”

Another human came seemingly from nowhere, as if he’d simply materialized out of the crowd whole cloth, and tapped the big guy on the shoulder.

“That’s _enough!”_

Cassim—evidently—actually _growled_ in frustration, but released the alien and stepped back so that it fell to the floor, wheezing for breath, the sound tinny and sharp through a rebreather.

The newcomer, who was smaller, tighter, leaner, but commanding and armed with a knife in his belt and a blaster in a thigh holster, propped his hands on his hips like a disappointed mother and stared up at his giant friend.

Cassim looked away first. “He tried to rob you.”

“So you said when he did it in the street. But he failed. So it’s over. We need to focus on getting the _Amol_ ready for takeoff.”

Cassim huffed in frustration, but slouched his shoulders forward.

Judal scanned the crowd, which was slowly withdrawing now that the promise of a fight was leaching out of the air, and noted that Hakuryuu was milling around in the corner, idly chatting with strangers.

Did a guy have to do everything around here?

He slid over to Hakuryuu and tapped him on the shoulder, then headed toward the blonde pilot and his giant, violent friend. Hakuryuu trailed after him like a kite in a high breeze.

“Oi,” Judal said. The pilot jumped and looked his way. Face to face with him now, Judal noted the red braided cord around his neck and the badly patched flight jacket. Badly sewn thread failed to cover what were unmistakably burn marks from blaster fire.

Judal grinned. These two looked _fun_.

“I don’t suppose you weirdos are heading off world any time soon?”

Hakuryuu cuffed him upside the back of the head and took over.

“What my, hm, _associate_ means to say is, if you’re headed off-world and you’ve got room for two more, we’re happy to pay. Might we discuss this in a... quieter venue?”

The pilot frowned, thoughtful, and looked them over before he nodded. “Sure. Talking never hurt anyone. I’m Alibaba. Come on. We’ll talk on my ship.”

 

Alibaba’s ship, a YT class freighter he called the _Amol Saiqa_ , looked like how the punchline to a bad joke feels when you hear it for the third time.

Judal hadn’t done anything more than open his mouth to comment on the junker when Hakuryuu turned around and gave him an ugly look.

He snapped his mouth shut and gave Hakuryuu an unrepentantly childish glare, but followed obediently enough as Hakuryuu boarded behind Alibaba.

“We’re gonna outfly the Empire on this bucket?” he sneered into Hakuryuu’s ear, grunting when Hakuryuu slammed an elbow into his gut. “ _Rude_.”

Alibaba flashed them a glance, but didn’t ask.

Judal grudgingly supposed that was a point in his favor.

“So,” Alibaba began, leading them into a small common area behind the cockpit. “What is it you guys need exactly? Just passage for two?”

Hakuryuu nodded, sitting politely where Alibaba indicated with his hands folded in his lap. “Just the two of us. Possibly one more on a return trip, if we cannot find other passage home. Halfway across the galaxy or so, to the LC Quadrant. Coordinates when we’ve agreed on a price. But more importantly, we need some element of... hm. _Discretion_.”

Judal itched to comment, but between Hakuryuu’s quelling look and the way Alibaba’s pet brute kept glaring, he kept his mouth shut. For now.

“LC Quadrant’s pretty far but that’s not a problem.” Alibaba clicked his tongue against his teeth. “ _Discretion_ , huh.”

“Mm.”

“Cassim and I can do discretion,” he said, shooting his pet a glance. Cassim shrugged. “We’ve done the Artemyra run... three times now, isn’t it?”

“Two and a half, technically,” Cassim said with a wry grin that showed a lot of tooth. Judal raised his eyebrows. So the beast could speak _and_ had a sense of humor!

“Alright no _technically_ , then,” Alibaba said sourly. “My point is, we’re—”

“You’re smugglers,” Judal accused, and grinned when Alibaba gave him a grumpy look. Hakuryuu looked ready to kick his feet out from under him.

Ah, the irony of that was so sweet.

“You could say that,” Alibaba said slowly.

“That’s perfect.”

“Judal,” Hakuryuu said, grinding the word between his teeth like he could turn gravel into a paste with just his jaws.

Alibaba crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against a table. “Do you have cargo?”

“No,” Hakuryuu insisted. “Like I said. Just us two. Maybe a third.”

The smuggler frowned. “Alright, then who is it you need ‘discretion’ _from_?”

Hakuryuu shot Judal a decidedly ugly look. He much preferred other faces his commander could make, and made a mental note to elicit one of those before the day was out, to make up for all the glaring.

“Imperials,” he said.

Alibaba jerked so hard that he almost kicked the table over. “ _Excuse_ me?”

Judal resisted the urge to whistle innocently when Hakuryuu glanced his way.

“As I said, we’re willing to pay...”

Alibaba shook his head, waving his hands. “No way. I’m not getting tangled up with the Empire.”

A crackle from an external loudspeaker drowned out Hakuryuu’s response, and all four froze.

“ _All ships, disengage your engines and de-initialize launch. Ground control, cancel all outbound flights for a mandatory Imperial inspection._ ”

“Oops?” Judal said, and laughed.

The smugglers leapt into action and Judal politely stepped out of their way.

“Like _hell_ ,” Alibaba snapped, racing for the cockpit. “Cassim! Take the gun! If they want to loot us they can loot our smoking corpses! You two! Don’t think this conversation’s over!”

Hakuryuu sighed, only relaxing minutely when the doors slid shut and they hadn’t been kicked out or forced to leave.

“Sometimes I hate you,” he said, and Judal grinned, leaning down to plant a small, obnoxiously cheerful kiss on his nose.

“I know.”

The engines of the _Amol Saiqa_ groaned into life as Alibaba flipped switches and tapped keycodes into the console. Judal and Hakuryuu slid into the seats behind him as the engines roared and caught, the ship lifting off the ground.

“ _YT-1300 Callsign Alpha Delta Sierra, bay N-2, disengage your engines and cancel launch. Repeat, YT-1300 Callsign Alpha Delta—_ ”

“Yeah yeah,” Alibaba growled, flipping a switch to redirect the speaker override, plunging the cockpit into blissful silence. He yanked a headset over his ears. “Cassim, you settled?” He nodded at the man’s response, then slid the set down to his neck and flipped another toggle to broadcast their comm.

“I’m seeing two cannons, Ali,” Cassim said, his voice crackling through the cockpit. “I can get to one of them from here but the other is outside.”

“Take it out,” Alibaba snapped. “We’ll deal with the other as it comes.”

There was no answer except the groan of sliding metal and machinery and then the muted double-note scream of the ship’s cannon firing. A shower of sparks and exploding metal across the hangar had techs and Imperial soldiers diving for cover, and the _Amol Saiqa_ lifted off the ground entirely, drifting as Alibaba took over the controls and swung it out toward the main door.

Which, Judal noticed, was beginning to close.

Hakuryuu gave him a meaningful glance, and he nodded, lifting a hand.

He hated subtle manipulation. It was boring, slow, and entirely too reminiscent of how the Order did things. But, sometimes it’s what you need.

He closed his eyes, focusing, and flicked his fingers, shifting the Force in a way that was only really comparable to driving a wedge into a running stream, diverting the flow until that quiet, ever-present energy ticked over. The door mechanisms jammed and ground to a halt.

“See that Cassim?” Alibaba said with a whoop and a cheer as they rebalanced and headed for the open hangar door with a disinterested kick of the engines. “Someone wants us to get out of here, that’s for sure!”

Hakuryuu inhaled slowly to keep himself calm and Judal shifted his focus, casting out a net of his own consciousness, feeling for the vibration of the remaining anti-aircraft cannon firing as they swooped out of the hangar and into the open air above the spaceport.

When the cannon swiveled, took its target, and fired, Judal was ready with a hand and a will too strong for a machine to ever hope to disobey. He nudged the gun, adjusting the blast off-course, just enough to let Alibaba dodge and roll and slip away like a ghost without so much as a scratch to the hull.

Cassim’s shouts of glee echoed through the ship as he swiveled around again and sent two blasts of energy through the ground cannon, the machine exploding into slag metal and frayed wires.

Alibaba kicked the engines up and took them into dark, open space, and Hakuryuu reached over to tangle his fingers into Judal’s. It was a subtle thing, unimportant, and yet, vital. Judal humored him, and squeezed his fingers in return.

 _We’re fine_ , it meant. _Stop fretting._

Failure had dogged their steps for months now, and they both knew it. But this, at least, was a small success.

And Judal wasn’t interested in quibbling about it being enough.

 

Haggling the smugglers’ fee wasn’t easy, especially considering they didn’t want to be dumped on the nearest Imperial outpost moon for “ _failure to negotiate_ ,” but Hakuryuu worked it out eventually, allowing—(encouraging)—Judal to graciously bow out of the discussion before they’d really gotten started. Which he did all too happily.

Hakuryuu found him later in one of the bunks, sprawled out on one of the two narrow cots they’d been allowed. He couldn’t sleep in open space. Some kind of inexplicable paranoia about the crushing weight of the void, but he at least _pretended_ to, sprawled out on the cot with his hands tucked behind his head and his cloak repurposed as a blanket.

He heard the door slide open, then shut, then the _tik-thud_ of the staff against a wall, but he only cracked an eye open when he felt the weight of Hakuryuu’s body on the cot down by his knees.

Hakuryuu sat there, just outside his easy reach, bowed over so his hands hung between his half-metal knees. He didn’t make any audible sound, but the slight ruffling of the ends of his hair betrayed a long, slow exhale two steps short of a sigh.

“You should get some rest too,” Judal said.

“Mm,” he said, acknowledging without strictly agreeing.

“C’mere.”

The cot was only barely big enough for one, but Judal lay on his side and pressed himself to the wall and pulled at Hakuryuu’s coat until he begrudgingly lay down.

“Good thing we’re both small.”

“Shut up.”

Judal snickered and carded his fingers through Hakuryuu’s hair, lips so close to his forehead his breath stirred the strands.

“So how do we convince the pipsqueak to come back with us?”

“We don’t call him a pipsqueak to his face, for one,” Hakuryuu said, and Judal heaved a sigh.

“Oh _fine_.”

“I don’t know,” Hakuryuu admitted, and Judal shut his mouth for once. “Maybe... we find him, and he doesn’t want to get involved. Maybe he defies the Order. Maybe he follows their wishes. Maybe he stays isolationist and lets the galaxy sort itself. Maybe he comes back in like a comet to set the whole world back on its feet.”

“Hm.”

“Maybe he remembers me.” Judal grunted in disapproval. “Or maybe he’s forgotten. Maybe he’s alone. Maybe he’s _not_. Maybe he has his little lioness with him and she still hates me.”

Judal frowned and poked Hakuryuu in the nose. “Enough moping.”

“Judal, we don’t know enough—”

“Who cares?” Hakuryuu puffed up his chest to protest and Judal talked over him. “Who cares if we know ‘enough’? Who cares how much ‘enough’ even is? No one can do recon but us. No one can bring back that tiny Jedi but us. So, we do it anyway. No matter what happens, no matter who wants to stop us. Not even the tiny Jedi can stop us if we want him badly enough. We’re the best squadron in Kou.

“We’ll fight the force of destiny itself, and we’ll win.”

“Even if _he_ wants to stop us?”

Judal hesitated.

“I thought so.”

“Even him,” he said, though there was a mulish tone to his voice.

“Judal.” Hakuryuu sounded tired.

“Nope, I’ve said it, so it’s true. Even _he_ can’t keep us from that tiny Jedi. Besides. If Sinbad knew where he was, he’d have found him by now.”

Hakuryuu frowned, but hummed vaguely in acknowledgement.

“We’ll get him back, my king.”

“I told you not to—”

Judal leaned forward to shut him up with his mouth, distracting him from idle protests. “How long till our smuggler friend gets us to the planet?”

“An hour, maybe a little less,” Hakuryuu said slowly, cautious.

“Good,” he said, and shifted until he could straddle Hakuryuu on the cot. “C’mere.”


	2. The Tiny Jedi

Judal looked down at the forested planet below them without much energy spent on hiding his distaste. Hakuryuu looked similarly ill-tempered, probably already imagining the strain on his new false joints that would come once they started wading through jungle muck and branch and brush.

Alibaba flipped switches and turned dials to pull them down into orbit and Judal gave a heroic effort not to tell the pilot to just forget the whole damn thing and turn them around.

“There’s practically nothing here,” the smuggler said, giving them a strange look. “Are you sure this is the right planet?”

“It is,” Hakuryuu said, though he eyed the windows like he wasn’t sure.

They drifted for an hour, waiting for scans to pick up something. _Anything_. Anything that wasn’t indeterminate plantlife and microfauna.

“Not sure anything could even live here,” Alibaba said after they had been sitting in silence for a downright awkward amount of time. “Not without common shipments from somewhere else, at least.”

“You’d be surprised what the tiny j—”

Hakuryuu’s elbow jammed straight into the now-dark bruise on Judal’s ribs from the prior day’s fight and the curses he laid on his partner’s life and family came out in a thready wheeze. He deeply regretted having let him see those while they were rolling around on that tiny cot.

“The what?” Alibaba asked, frowning.

“Nothing,” Hakuryuu said.

His voice was so cold Alibaba turned toward his readouts again and shivered. “Alright, whatever, sure.”

The silence returned, hanging heavy in the air like the shroud over a funeral, and Judal wondered, very cautiously, if maybe their lead had been wrong.

Had the Emperor’s men sent them halfway across the galaxy on a wild goose chase? Had they been _duped_?

What if the Rebellion—Kou, he reminded himself in the General’s voice—was being attacked right now and they were too far away to do anything about it?

He leaned forward, about to get up and try his comm again, see if he could get through, but they all flinched when a chime cut through the cockpit like a bell. Judal froze, bent almost double in his chair, and for a painfully long moment Alibaba didn’t move, staring at the display like he wasn’t sure what to do with it.

“Well?” Hakuryuu said.

Alibaba jumped, looking at Hakuryuu as if he didn’t recognize him before turning back to the display and thumbing through the data.

“Signs of life,” he said, sounding bewildered.

“Really?” Judal asked, skeptical.

“Yeah. Large life form. Human-size, by the looks of it.”

“Is there anywhere near there we can land?” Hakuryuu’s voice was tight, shot through with simmering energy.

“Hmm...” Alibaba fiddled with the controls. “Yeah. There. A clearing. Hang on, I’ll bring her down.”

In scant minutes the _Amol Saiqa_ was touching down in a large open space edged with cut stumps, making Judal think the spot was sporadically cleared and chopped back whenever the forest started trying to reclaim it. Alibaba gave the forest wall a glance, blaster in hand, and frowned.

“You’ve got eight hours and then I’m leaving this sorry rock behind, alright?”

“Aw, sweet doll. Don’t worry, we’ll come back.” Judal grinned at the boy and gave him so saccharine a wave that Alibaba hissed in frustration and flapped a hand at him before retreating into the ship.

“Interesting,” Hakuryuu said, looking around from the end of the ship’s boarding platform. Judal stepped up next to him, now that Alibaba was gone and out of earshot, and eyed the mud and tamped-down grass with bored interest.

“You sure you can walk in this shit?”

Hakuryuu’s sigh spoke volumes.

“I’m just saying.”

“I’ll be able to walk,” he said, testy, and Judal shrugged.

“Look, whatever, but I’m not carrying you if those metal joints get gummed up with dirt.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, you’d never abandon me in this god-forsaken forest.”

“Try me.”

Hakuryuu flashed him a smirk and adjusted the staff of his vibro-glaive between his shoulders as he stepped off the platform and into the muck.

“Tried, bought, and paid for, in fact. Judal, as if you’d _ever_ actually leave me behind. I’m your meal ticket.”

Judal frowned, searching for a response. He couldn’t think of anything, and followed like a stormcloud, grumbling and dark with displeasure.

“You are so lucky you’re a good lay.”

Hakuryuu actually _laughed_ at him. Judal may have hated forest planets, but he’d say this for them: the fresh air was good for his partner, _apparently_.

 

They walked for an hour, following the scattered beeps of Hakuryuu’s palm scanner. Judal flicked branches out of their way with twitches of his fingers and resisted swatting branches into Hakuryuu’s face for a record-breaking ten minutes.

At which time he was tasked with holding the scanner, and Hakuryuu held back the plants with his staff.

Honestly the man could be such a _bore_ sometimes.

“Do you really think the little jedi is here?” Judal said. Said, not whined. Definitely said.

Hakuryuu sighed. Again.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“For the same reason you do.”

“Enlighten me, o King.”

“Shut up,” Hakuryuu said, but without much venom. “Because this is exactly the kind of place he would think to hide, because there’s nowhere else that makes much sense for him to be, because Sinbad had coordinates to this position, whether or not he’d ever done anything with them, because...”

Judal frowned, a disturbance at the edge of his awareness catching his attention as Hakuryuu kept talking.

“Wait—”

“Judal, honestly, you aren’t even listening, I can tell.”

“ _Wait_ ,” he said again, and Hakuryuu frowned, turning back to look at him, drawing his glaive off his shoulders without another word. At Judal’s fraction of a nod, Hakuryuu engaged the glaive, blue light coursing around the end of the staff and casting his face into dark shadow.

“That’s far enough.”

The voice was feminine, snapped out like a whipping chain... and was painfully familiar.

“Shit,” Hakuryuu muttered.

Judal sighed and slowly raised his hands. Hakuryuu disengaged the glaive and dropped the staff.

“Hello Morgiana,” Hakuryuu called out, without looking up.

Even Judal would admit, if grumpily, that her time in exile had not made her less beautiful. In some ways, it had only enhanced her, giving her a roughness and a dashing dustiness that some might find attractive.

“Hakuryuu,” she said slowly, as if she couldn’t believe it. “And Judal,” she added, with significantly more nastiness.

“Hello!” he called out cheerfully, waving with one of his raised hands. “Is the little Jedi around somewhere? We’d really like to talk to him.”

Hakuryuu slowly turned his head. He looked about ready to murder Judal.

For a long moment, Morgiana watched them in silence, reading them, judging them. Judal felt strangely naked. Way less fun with her than it was with Hakuryuu, if anyone was interested in his opinion.

“Alright,” she said, slowly, her hair cascading over her shoulder. “Follow me. Weapons first, if you please.”

Hakuryuu begrudgingly allowed her to take the glaive, then followed her, giving Judal an ugly look.

“What?” he said, shrugging, unconcerned with the knowledge that Morgiana could hear them. “You were just gonna stand there in broody silence and not speak up first and you know it.”

“That isn’t the point,” Hakuryuu growled.

“Too late now.”

She led them deeper into the jungle, swiping at the foliage with a machete now and then to clear a path.

“You two look like hell,” she noted after a few minutes, without so much as turning to look over her shoulder.

Hakuryuu was _brooding_ again, so Judal decided to take one for the team. (He was a giver, after all.)

“So do you. _Ouch—_!” He rubbed his side, wheezing, where Hakuryuu had elbowed him directly in his bruised ribs. “ _Stop_ that.”

“Then stop saying stupid shit,” Hakuryuu grumbled. “It’s been a... long two days,” he said, to her this time.

“Is that how long it’s been since you got the starmap to this location?” she asked.

Hakuryuu jolted. “How did you know...”

She shook her head, not answering, but hacked down a vine and held it back with one arm, revealing a small clearing and a hut that looked very much out of place among the vines and the swampy grunge. The walls weren’t so much walls at all but old steel crates repurposed into a structure, and covered over with leaves. It was very obviously meant to be a dwelling, built out of anything they’d been able to find.

Standing in the middle of the clearing was a young man, taller than they remembered him, though smiling just as widely as ever.

“Because as soon as our supplier missed his arrival window I knew the Emperor and his servant had stolen the map,” Aladdin said. “Come in, please. Sit. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”


	3. Dangerous Tactics

To their credit, Aladdin and Morgiana’s hovel was not nearly as dank, mildewing, and putrescent as it looked from the outside. Judal supposed that was, in part, intentional—if the dwelling looked uninhabitable, Imperials were less likely to notice it and investigate. In fact, if it looked as though it hadn’t been lived in for some time and was being reclaimed by nature, all the better.

The tiny Jedi was at least that smart. But to be fair, Aladdin was, as a general rule, actually much wiser than Judal gave him credit for. Not that he’d ever admit as much aloud.

By contrast to the exterior, inside the little hut was a warm, dry space, insulated at least in part by Force manipulation. Judal could feel the thrum of idle power in the walls, and it made his _teeth_ vibrate. Extremely uncomfortable. The single-room home was lit by a small central fire banked with heavy stones that had had all the vines scrubbed from them, and roasting over top of it was a pot of... something. It didn’t smell _good_ exactly, but then, nutrient pastes rarely did. Aladdin offered to share the contents of the pot.

Judal opened his mouth and was about half a breath into a resounding _hell no_ when Hakuryuu jabbed a finger into a bruise, right between two ribs, and Judal’s breath exploded like a popped balloon.

“You shame us with your generosity,” Hakuryuu said, his voice almost uncharacteristically soft. Judal recognized that tone, the tone taught to them both in Kou so many years ago. After the fire, but before Imperial mandates. The lessons had stuck better with Hakuryuu than Judal. “Thank you, but knowing that your shipments have been interrupted, we could not in good conscience take what little you have.”

Aladdin considered that answer, then beamed. “Brother Hakuryuu is just as polite as ever, eh Morgiana?”

Judal glanced to the doorway of the little hovel, where the woman was leaning against the wall like a leashed lion. She grunted in agreement, but said nothing else.

“So.” Aladdin settled cross-legged on the other side of the fire, perched atop an emptied crate. He gestured to two other such crates on the other side of the fire, and Hakuryuu sat. Judal followed suit, albeit more grudgingly.

Aladdin watched Hakuryuu for a strangely long, quiet moment.

“So?” Judal prompted. This was boring.

Hakuryuu sighed, but didn’t look away from Aladdin’s piercing gaze. Aladdin didn’t look away either, but his smile thinned to a cautious interest.

“I see you still walk the line with the Dark Side,” Aladdin said.

Hakuryuu hesitated, considering this, and then gestured to himself. A question. Aladdin nodded.

“It...” Hakuryuu frowned. “The Empire must fall. I will use what tools are available to me if I must.”

Aladdin nodded, not happily, but like he accepted it. “Such tactics are dangerous, but not without their merits. And perhaps...”

Now Judal perked forward, curious. He shifted slightly on his crate.

Aladdin looked toward Morgiana, then sighed. “I have my theories.”

Judal clicked his tongue against his teeth. “What theories, tiny Jedi?”

Hakuryuu moved to hit him again for his choice of words and Judal waved a hand, shoving Hakuryuu’s crate a foot to the side with an audible _scrape_ of metal across wood. His partner wheeled his arms to avoid toppling over, and Judal’s uncaring snicker was rewarded with a look that promised later vengeance.

Aladdin merely chuckled. “Theories about the balance. The Order was founded on the idea that Light must outweigh Dark, that the world thrived when the balance was canted toward Light, crushing the occasional rise of the Sith.”

“Of course,” Judal scoffed. “That’s how it’s always been.”

“But what if?” Aladdin said, and Judal didn’t want to try to explain the weird shudder of tension that ran down his spine at the tone in Aladdin’s voice. “What if the Order was wrong?”

“Well I could’ve told you that,” Judal said with a snort.

Aladdin smiled. “Of course,” he said, slowly, like he was still pondering it as he said it.

“You sound like the old Masters.”

“Maybe I do.”

Hakuryuu sighed. “The philosophical debate is all well and good but Master Aladdin, I would really like to discuss with you—”

Aladdin sprang from his crate in a flurry of robes, and Judal was only a half-second behind him, cursing fluently in every language he could think of on short notice.

Morgiana flew to a bank of electronics in one corner as Hakuryuu, not to be left out of the group, also jumped to his feet.

“What is it?” Hakuryuu snapped.

The comm unit on Judal’s hip crackled to life and Alibaba’s voice came through. “Oi, oi, guys! Guys! We’ve got Imperial callsigns coming in, and a _bunch_ of them!”

Morgiana looked up from the display and gave a grim nod. “Imperial detail. Too big for a patrol.”

“It’s no patrol,” Judal said, his eyes shut to help block out further distractions.

“She’s here,” Aladdin said.

Hakuryuu tensed, his metal joints creaking. “But she...”

“The Emperor had the starcharts,” Aladdin reminded him.

“We have a ship,” Hakuryuu said.

Judal’s comm unit crackled again. “Oi!”

He grabbed it and swung it up to his mouth. “I hear you, you don’t have to shout. Start the launch. We’re coming back.” He frowned at Aladdin, then sighed heavily. “And we’ve got two more with us.”

“You said _one_!”

Hakuryuu wrestled the receiver from him as Morgiana hastily packed a bag, stuffing needed items into it before throwing it over her shoulder.

“I _know_ what I said, Alibaba. Get us and our two friends home and the Rebellion will make it more than worth your time.”

The next several moments were full of static-y cursing and what sounded suspiciously like Cassim grumbling at Alibaba.

“ _Fine_! I expect a reward for this. But you better get here _fast!_ ”

Hakuryuu looked to Aladdin.

“Time to go,” Aladdin said.

 

They moved quickly, much more quickly than they had on the way in. Morgiana knew the paths better than they had, and followed paths that she’d kept cleared for this purpose.

Judal changed the frequency on his comm unit.

“Black Leader?”

“Black Two,” Judal shouted as they ran across a narrow stone trail bridging a bog. “Black Leader is with me. Report to the General: we reached our destination and have the target with us. Imperial attack forces advancing on our position. We need cover for a retreat, and we need it _ten minutes ago_.”

There was a flurry of activity behind the comm tech’s voice.

“Understood, Black Squadron. Red Squadron scrambling to your position.”

A red streak flashed in front of his face and struck a tree to the left in a shower of sparks.

“Blaster fire!” Morgiana shouted, wheeling and darting up into the low-hanging branches of the trees.

“Shit!” Judal switched the comm back to Alibaba’s channel and spun. The hum of Hakuryuu’s vibro-glaive gave him at least some measure of reassurance, and Aladdin stood at Judal’s back, their hands raised to deflect oncoming shots.

Three Stormtroopers advanced first in a V, stomping underbrush down under their white boots. One fell when a shot reflected back at him from the glaive, another’s neck snapping when Judal flicked his hand, spinning the man’s helmet like a top.

Aladdin shut his eyes, then stood straight again, unconcerned.

Morgiana popped down from the canopy, grabbed the last Stormtrooper by the armpits, and hauled him up into the trees.

An aborted scream echoed across the jungle before she dropped back down and caught back up to the group.

“Come on,” she said, and took off again into the trees.

Though his mouth wasn’t actually open, Hakuryuu slid a finger under Judal’s jaw as if to lift it off the floor, smirked at him, and ran after her.

Alibaba’s channel was unsettlingly quiet, and Judal pinged him again as they approached the clearing.

No answer. Only static.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Judal announced. Aladdin nodded, but kept running, so Judal and Hakuryuu did too.

The _Amol Saiqa_ was gone.

In its place was an Imperial shuttle. Namely the personal shuttle of the Emperor’s most feared dark servant.

Lady Arba.

Who was, at the moment, standing, resplendent in armor and flanked with armed Stormtroopers, in front of the boarding platform of her ship.

Her voice hissed and clicked through the rebreather mask she wore.

“Solomon’s child,” she said, and the Stormtroopers, as if expecting precisely that cue, raised their rifles. Footsteps marching in time, closing behind them, indicated more gunmen. Judal sighed.

“You’ve avoided us for a long time, Jedi.”

Aladdin raised his head, but said nothing.

“Take them into custody.”

A Stormtrooper captain stepped up beside her. “What of the others, my lady? We were not expecting a group...”

“All of them,” she said, impatient, and stepped to the side to watch as her men cuffed the four of them and led them into the ship. “The Jedi and his lion will divulge the secrets we desire. But the rebels will tell us what we _need_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seriously, I apologize for the cliffhanger there at the end. NOT COOL, I KNOW.


End file.
